Bug#466714: bogus advice in copyright-without-copyright-notice

[Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>]

Russ Allbery wrote:
> | Your debian/copyright file must contain the following information:
> |
> |  - The author(s) name
> |  - The year(s) of the copyright
> |  - The used license(s)
> |  - The URL to the upstream source
>
> Going from that to saying that debian/copyright should include a correct
> copyright notice is a bit of a leap, but not much of one, as a valid
> copyright notice is the best way of satisfying the first two requirements.

If the author of the work is an individual, then the copyright exists some 
number of years past his lifetime.  If the author doesn't write "Copyright 
2007" in his files, then I can't make that up.  Moreover, the exact years 
really don't matter much.  Either the copyright exists, and then we are 
presumably granted a suitable license, or it doesn't, in which case we can 
use the work anyway.

The other part that is not really clear in the sources you cite is author vs. 
copyright holder.  I don't think it can be very successful to attempt to 
squeeze the reality of authorship rights into a uniform copyright statement.  
We need to explain to the user which rights he has and how those rights came 
about, but there is no need to beat that into a common form so lintian can 
parse it.